WICHE'S LAND. 



179 



to certain unauthenticated traditions, some Dutch whalers, notably Cornelia 

 Eoule, advanced in the last century to within. 5" of the pole. But Parry, was 

 obliged to abandon his ship in Treurenberg Bay, in a little inlet named from it 

 Hecla Cove, pushing thence northwards in small boats and sledges. But he pro- 

 gressed very slowly, and at last ceased to make any way, the floating ice drifting 

 southwards as he endeavoured to advance northwards. The attempt, renewed in 

 1872 and 1873 by Xordenskjold, led to no results, owing to the rottenness of the 

 ice up to the eightieth parallel, and its extreme roughness beyond that point. On 



Fig. 88. — ^Wiche's Land. 

 Scale 1 : a.TOO.OC-O. 



[ ■^- 



^»i 

 ^^M 



Land- 



so Miles. 



Sea covered with ice and 

 open, summer of 18^2. 



several occasions Captain Palander failed to mate more than half a mile a day in 

 his sledges. 



III.— MICHES LAND A^'D GILES LAXD. 



East of Spitzbergen the Arctic Ocean is not so free of land as in the north. In 

 this direction a long chain of lofty mountains is visible on clear days some « or 

 80 miles off, belonging to Wiche's Land, so named in 1617 in honour of the 

 merchant, Richard "SViche, or TVyche, by the English whalers, who were the first to 

 sight this island. After a lapse of two centuries and a half another Englishman 

 again sighted the island in 1864, and in 1870 Heuglin and Zeil, thinking its 

 snowy crests lay north of the position indicated for Wiche's Land, renamed it 

 after their sovereign, Charles of 'Wiirttemberg. The Swedish explorers had, in 

 their turn, named one of its mountains, seen by them, " Swedish Headland," so that 



